Review of A Certain Magical Index

This review is going to be a bit weird, because Index is a personal favorite of mine but from a technical standpoint I can't really give it a 10. The story itself is nothing unusual or spectacular, ordinary boy gets caught into amazing and dangerous secrets of the world, but I find the "ordinary boy" part to be quite arguable, as the hero, Kamijou Touma, was born with a special ability called "Imagine Breaker" that can cancel any form of supernatural or magical phenomenon and lives in a sci-fi city full of students that go through ESP development curriculum to gain supernatural abilities of various types. Manydescribe the plot as science vs magic and later on that does come true, but for the beginning of the series, it's mostly about Touma and his allies fighting enemies from both sides, each with their own personal agenda.

Toaru is full of cliche characters, but they're well applied and I personally think that matters way more than being innovative, but if cliches turn you off, take this as a warning. Many characters really felt like they could be actual people (ignoring the ridiculous get-ups they use of course) and some of them go through some pretty good developments, the most notable ones being former villain Accelerator and Touma himself.

For me the selling point about Toaru is its mood, the feeling it gives that this is an actual world, and despite having a focus, there are other stories going on in other places with other people, and having side characters that actually can be sympathized with and aren't treated as mere tools, although it has some that aren't treated this well too, for the most part I enjoy most of the characters and actually want to see them pull through.

The protagonist is still the center though, so how does Touma fares? Well, if you have something against idealistic heroes you might not really care for him, as he's a paragon of idealism, but he's constantly accompanied by people with more realistic points of view than his own. If you do however like this type, you'll probably enjoy the speeches he gives to his enemies, to refute their claims even if he himself thinks they have valid points. I personally liked very much how he doesn't simply beat the antagonists up and call it a day, he has to put his 2 cents on the matter first.

The fight scenes and concepts behind the ESP powers and Magic of this world were also really fun in my opinion, but some fights did feel a little awkward and the animation is just average sometimes, overall they're still very good and most of the confrontations had me fully interested, especially the ones that were more tactical fights than fist to fist.

To sum it up, Toaru has its flaws but none too important to really ruin all the good points it has, and if you find yourself liking the show for reasons similar to mine, I would really suggest you check out the novels, especially for the part where it shows the thought process of the characters a lot more than the anime.